SnackNation Office Tour! | Leveling Up (EP 3.4)

Today we are visiting SnackNation. I'm gonna talk to the CMO.

We've got our core values up here on the wall.

Health above all else.

Display grit without ego. Serve and inspire. Seek perpetual growth. Spread joy and optimism.

And how did you— what are core values and how did you come up with these?

Took us a long time, actually. We actually had like 9 core values from our previous business. We thought, it was like, hey, this is too long. Let's boil it down even more to 5 core values so everyone can remember them. And it was a multiple-week process, back and forth with the team, suggestions, team voting, all that. Ultimately, we got the top 5.

So how do you— do you hire and fire based on them? Like, how important are these core values to you?

Yeah, so that's part of our hiring process, is to make sure that the people that we're bringing on board either display these core values or we believe have the aptitude to have the core values.

Perpetual growth. Well, let's talk about that one. Seek perpetual growth. How do you measure for perpetual growth?

Questions that I ask in our hiring hiring process is, what did you listen to on the way into this interview? What do you listen to on commutes? What do you listen to in the gym? What was the last book you read? What blogs do you like to read? How are you being curious and passionate about learning? And you can tell when someone's like, they know exactly what podcasts they subscribe to, what books they've read, what blogs they frequent, all the different areas of content, and they're able to tell you.

Love it.

And there's a lot of people that actually don't. They listen to the radio and that's not really seeking perpetual growth.

As we walk, I wanna talk about the podcast, which you guys actually have. So what is the podcast and why do you guys do it?

The podcast is called The Awesome Office Show. We do it because part of our mission here at Snack Nation is to help companies become better, have better cultures, have more fun. And the podcast, The Awesome Office Show, is helping those leaders In those companies, those people-minded, those people-focused executives to create better cultures. If you notice, we were walking along a walkway of blue dots. So this is meant to have kind of an inside track all the way around the office where people can do walking meetings. We find that you get— the brain gets going and the blood gets flowing for when you walk and have a meeting at the same time. We also have strategically placed questions along the way so that you can actually stop and think. What would you call your autobiography?

What would you call—

yeah, we have a couple letters missing, so we need to fix them. There's just been so much traffic that we're fixing the letters. What would you call your autobiography?

Many Walking Meetings. What do you— I mean, why walking meetings? What are the benefits?

Yeah, the benefits are it gets the blood flowing, gets your heart rate up. It actually puts your brain into a bit of a different state as opposed to just sitting there sluggishly. It opens up your mind and you can become more creative.

Love it. Great. And I think what Steve Jobs used to do walking meetings all the time.

A big walking meeting guy. Yeah, exactly.

What else we got?

I mean, this is the main floor. This is the main, you know, this is, this is where most of the magic happens. We also have an upstairs mezzanine area. Yeah, but half of this down here is sales. So we have about 50 to 60 sales reps. And then the other half on the other side is our products team, our marketing, and our member success, which is like, you know, customer success in SaaS.

Got it. And what's, what's the gong over there?

The gong is to celebrate new deals happening.

Victory.

We have so many deals happening every day that it's up here on the board.

Oh, look at that.

It's called Hoopla.

Nice.

And when we put sales up there, like, we celebrate and there's like a gong that goes off and it makes it—

There it is.

Oh, look at that.

Big sale.

We got a big sale. Let's see how much it's for right now. Yeah. $760 a month in snacks. For a company.

For a company.

There you go.

There you go. All right, let's keep walking.

We usually reserve that gong for newbies that are getting like their first opportunity, their first sale. That's usually when we ring that gong.

Makes them feel special, right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

And then we got these, these, this chippo game here. If you hit certain milestones on the sales team, then you get a chance to chip a golf ball. And if it goes into the hole, then you win like gift cards, Whole Foods Cards, lunch, you know, whatever.

Why Whole Foods?

Because we are a health and wellness company.

Because it's healthy, that's why.

Exactly.

So, okay. What else have we got?

Nice job, Joey.

That's it, just eating one drink.

So let's see what else we got.

What are like all the sections over here?

So this is all sales still. Now we're in the area of products.

Products.

So what we do is we work a lot of deals with snack companies. Because we have a distribution network through all of these offices nationwide, and snacks get exposure to those employees. So we work deals with the snack brands.

And what are these over here?

This is some of our tasting lineup, our panel. So we have a proprietary taste testing process. Okay.

Proprietary taste testing process.

Yes. So you can't just be in a SnackNation box. You have to submit your products. And then we put that through a tasting panel where we grade the snacks based on 7 to 10 different criteria. And then we have a score. And then the snacks with the highest score then go to our selection committee, and then the selection committee decides on the final snacks based on what kind of mix we need to have and some of the other brands that we may have offered recently. Cool, so you get free food all the time. We get a lot, yeah, a lot. And then that's how we get our ultimate curation in our different boxes is through this taste testing process.

Got it.

We have about 15 different curations every month, and companies get to choose which curation they want. And then we also have some customization involved.

Got it.

We got our tech team here. This is all tech here. So we're building out an app for our office managers, the people that are handling the snacks in the office.

Okay.

We're building out an insights and data and insights platform as well.

Wow.

So we know what people like, what they think about the snacks, and we're getting that data and feedback back to the snack brands.

Got it. And what's this over here?

This is all marketing right here. So the marketing team where we're working our demand generation, email marketing, marketing automation. Creative with video and then also social media, graphic design, the whole suite.

Cool. And let's check out these conference rooms. What are these all about?

Conference rooms?

Yeah, we got some quotes on them. Like, what's the story?

Yeah, so every room, if you notice, every room has the name of a city. Yeah, because we are Snack Nation. So every room has a city, and then in In each room, if you look on the wall, is a prominent individual from that city with a quote that lines up with one of our core values. So this core value is spread joy and optimism. Maya Angelou, San Francisco, quote from her, and then a question that we pose for someone to think about that. So what we have right here that's forming up right outside right now is called the Crush It The Crush It Call is where we come together as a company and we talk about an accolade of a job well done from someone on the team, and then what we're grateful for personally. It used to be really small where everyone went around the circle and did that. Now we're at 100+ employees and we don't have time for everyone, so it's kind of on a volunteer basis. You can speak— whoever wants to, they can speak up and crush somebody.

Crush somebody.

That's right.

All right, let's check it out.

It's a unique part of our culture. You came into your role extremely knowledgeable.

Spread that joy and optimism. Let's speak of crushing George.

As kind of a family here at Snack Nation, I would really love to kind of see all that love and support go her way.

We're here because of 4 AM. We're here because of 2-a-days, 5-a-days. We're up here because we had a dream and let nothing stand in our way. I like this question: what are your 4 AMs or 5-a-days that are helping you embrace your challenges to make you stronger and achieve success. How are you going above and beyond? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, dude.

See you. Peace, bud.